Phone Calls

Pick a voice, write a greeting, set your office number, ring your own phone first, and decide what happens when the AI Receptionist cannot finish a call.

The Phone tab holds everything about how the receptionist handles a call, in the order a call happens: who rings, how it sounds, and what it does when it gets stuck.

These settings are kept whether or not phone calls are switched on, so you can set them up before you go live. They only take effect once Phone calls is on under Channels.

Voice and greeting

Voice picks how the receptionist sounds. Choose the Apptoto default voice or one of the standard voices. Cloned voices, set up under Settings > Voices, are available on request.

Greeting is the first thing every caller hears, spoken exactly as written. Leave it blank to use the default, which is built from the business name on the Knowledge tab.

Caution

Some states require you to tell callers they are speaking with an AI. If that applies to you, say so in your greeting. Apptoto does not add a disclosure for you.

Click Try it beside the greeting to call your receptionist from your browser and hear the voice and greeting currently in the form, before you save them.

Typing sounds while looking things up lets callers hear keyboard noise while the receptionist checks your calendar, instead of it saying “let me check that for you”. With it off, it tells the caller what it is doing.

When the receptionist cannot help a caller

Exactly one of these two happens, every time. You are notified either way, wherever you already get notified about client replies.

• Take a message - it asks for their name, the best number to reach them, and what they need, then sends you the message. Nothing is recorded.
• Send them to voicemail - it says it is recording a message for the office, then the caller hears a beep and speaks in their own words. You get the recording.

A caller who asks to leave a message gets the same treatment straight away, without the receptionist trying to help first.

Either way, the conversation shows up in your Inbox tagged Message taken or Voicemail, and on the Activity tab with the message or the recording length.

Transferring a caller to a person instead

Check Transfer the caller to a person instead, when: and describe in plain language when a transfer should happen. For example:

Weekdays before 4pm, or anyone who says it’s urgent. Never on Saturdays.

When your rule applies, the call goes to your Office phone number (below). Any other time, the receptionist falls back to taking a message or sending the caller to voicemail, whichever you chose.

Leave the box blank to transfer whenever a caller asks for a person.

Office phone

Number is the number the receptionist rings first and sends transferred callers to. Leave it blank to use the number your Apptoto number already forwards to, which you set under Settings > Caller ID.

Avoid a call loop

Your office phone number must be a line that does not forward back to Apptoto. If you have forwarded your business line to your Apptoto number, put a direct line or a mobile number here instead, or transferred calls will come straight back to the receptionist.

Ring my phone first

With Ring my phone first checked, an incoming call rings your office phone before the receptionist picks up. Whoever answers hears who is calling and presses any key to take the call. If nobody does that in time, the receptionist takes the call instead.

The dropdown below the checkbox sets how long your phone rings first. Choose from 10 to 30 seconds, labeled with roughly how many rings that is.

Tip

Your phone’s voicemail cannot press a key, so it never steals the call, even if it answers first. That means you can leave your own voicemail set up as it is.

This is the setting to use when you want a person to get first crack at every call and the receptionist to be the safety net. A call the receptionist picks up this way never transfers back to the phone that just did not answer.

A typical setup

1. Turn on Phone calls under Channels.
2. Pick a voice and write your greeting, then click Try it to hear it.
3. Choose what happens when it cannot help - take a message, or send the caller to voicemail.
4. Enter your office phone number, using a line that does not forward back to Apptoto.
5. Decide whether your phone rings first, and for how long.
6. Click Save.
7. Forward your business line to your Apptoto number so clients calling your published number reach the receptionist.